Danbury's school safety task force in works

Updated 11:37 pm, Monday, January 28, 2013

DANBURY -- A newly formed Board of Education school security task force will tap state and national expertise to improve safety equipment and protocols in the city's school buildings.

The task force was formed like other groups around the state and country in the wake of the Dec. 14 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, where 20 first- graders and six educators were killed by an intruder who then killed himself.

Mayor Mark Boughton, who will play a role with the school board's panel, also chairs a subcommittee for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities on school safety.

"We are still being formed and obviously we will be looking for lots of collaboration with the city," Thompson said Monday.

The plan is for the task force to make recommendations to the school board at its first meeting in April.

"We will start with the work that has been done internally by (school finance director) Joe Martino and (building and grounds official) Rich Jalbert in assessing our buildings already, and then reach out from there," Thompson said.

Board members Eileen Alberts and Annrose Fluskey-Lattin will join Danbury High Principal Gary Bocaccio, South Street School Principal Marnie Shorck, Immaculate High Principal Joe Carmen, two parents, a member of the Parent-Teacher Organization, three teachers, city officials and first responders on the task force.

Bocaccio said he was glad to be invited onto the panel.

"It's important that we continue to improve our practices. I want to be part of any new plans we make because this is the biggest school building in the city,'' Bocaccio said. "And I have some of my own thoughts on this as well."

Boughton said he would hire a consultant to audit the city school buildings.

Boughton said his CCM working committee will hold its first meeting Wednesday. He said he expects to have a report ready within a few weeks that would provide about a dozen recommendations that would be forwarded to the committee as a whole.

"There is no one size that fits. All municipalities are a little different. They have different size buildings and different finances, so not every recommendation would fit,'' Boughton said.

In general, he said, discussions have focused on locks, layouts of new buildings and personnel issues.

"Every first selectman and mayor has heard the pros and cons of having a police officer in every building. There are a lot of logistical challenges to putting a cop in every building, and that's what the public needs to hear," Boughton said. "I testified Friday at the legislative school safety panel and the discussion moved to the topic of police in schools. Everybody has a different opinion."

But Boughton said he supports adding "safety advocates" at the 11 elementary schools in Danbury. Since the shooting, there has been a private security firm providing a security officer in those schools.

The middle and high schools already have advocates and police officers.

"My recommendation to the school board is that safety advocates are not options," Boughton said. "But across the state, we need to have common training procedures for advocates so they approach the job in the same way. So if you walk into Danbury or into New Fairfield, you want to be sure that everyone has the same training and could provide the same information to the first responders."

Boughton said that no matter what the school board's final budget will be, the city would add the money needed to pay for the advocates.